Hillary gets a hero's welcome, 50 years on

Kathmandu goes wild as crowds jostle for a glimpse of the almost god-like first conqueror of Everest, writes Richard Spencer in the Nepalese capital

12:01AM BST 28 May 2003

From the ragged Tundikhel parade ground to the magnificent temples of Durbar Square, the people of Kathmandu turned out with banners and confetti to honour their favourite adoptive son yesterday.

Pulled, pushed and sometimes battered through a mass of well-wishers in a horse-drawn carriage, Sir Edmund Hillary received their slightly chaotic attentions with the good grace of a man who has been a celebrity and hero in Nepal and around the world for half a century.

"Today has been a fantastic celebration of the warmth of the people of Nepal and of the mountaineers who have climbed the great Mount Everest," he told them, paying tribute to those alongside him.

They included: Gyalzan Sherpa, one of the 1953 team; his fellow-summiteer Tenzing Norgay's son, Jamling; Junko Tabei, the first woman on Everest; and Reinhold Messner, one of the first pair to climb it without oxygen.

Tabei, now a diminutive figure in traditional Japanese dress, was at the age of 35 the first woman on Everest in 1975; Messner, whom Hillary said he admired "almost more than anyone else", was also the first to climb solo.

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"It is a great honour that you are doing us," he said. "We are all great lovers of the Himalayas and the Himalayan people."

Yesterday, in this week-long jamboree to mark the day 50 years ago when he and Tenzing stood on top of Everest, 100 miles to the north-east, it was the turn of the capital to do homage.

Hillary, now 83, was treated almost as a god. From the start of yesterday's procession, the enthusiasm to get a sight or touch of the former bee-keeper from New Zealand was inspiring.

He was mobbed when he arrived at the parade ground, where carriages, two Royal Guard bands - one brass, one bagpipe - and a party of schoolchildren were waiting to escort him around town. And then as the carriage set off, boys and grown men hurled themselves at its side, thrusting pieces of paper under his nose for him to sign autographs.

On the way to Durbar Square, site of the old royal palace, the crowds were lining the streets and waving from behind the lattice shutters on the upper floors. Hillary's status in Nepal derives not just from the fame and revenue his and Tenzing's achievement have brought.

His aura can be traced to a conversation which Sherpas like to repeat almost by heart. It took place on a 1960 expedition, and began when, in Hillary's words, "a group of us were huddled around a smoky fire on the Tolam Bau glacier and the conversation turned idly to the welfare of the Sherpas".

"What will happen to you all in the future?" Hillary asked one of them, who thought for a moment and then replied: "In the mountains we are as strong as you - maybe stronger. But our children lack education.

"Our children have eyes but they cannot see. What we need more than anything is a school."

Next spring, Hillary walked into a company in Calcutta and persuaded it to give him a big aluminium prefab. On his next trip to the mountain, he and his team levelled an airstrip, had the prefab flown in, and built it with their own hands.

Khumjung school opened in June 1961 with 40 pupils, and is still open today, one of 27 schools, two hospitals and dozens of clinics, bridges and reforestation projects built by Hillary's foundation, the Himalayan Trust.

Of those original 40 children, with their "scruffy clothes, bare feet, rosy cheeks and irresistible sparkling eyes", one is an airline pilot, and others work in business, a far cry from the potato planting that used to be the main means of support.

In Durbar Square, Hillary himself was concentrating on the "felicitations" being recited by representatives of the Municipal Council, and on keeping cool while wreathed in an increasing number of honorary prayer shawls despite the 90 degree heat.

Though he was unwell when he arrived in Kathmandu, and still looked pale yesterday, he was able to stand to receive the cheers of appreciation from the crowds.

Then, with his short speech, and a two-handed wave, he fought his way back to his carriage and the procession resumed. And as the streets narrowed, the man who made his name five miles above the rest of the world was hauled away through the dusty, crowded bazaars.